Tom Perkins, billionaire, says rich should get more votes

Tom Perkins, the billionaire venture capitalist who came under fire last month by suggesting that the richest 1 percent were being persecuted like Jews in Nazi Germany, is now suggesting that the rich should get more than one vote.

Perkins made the comment at an event in San Francisco called ‘The War on the 1%’ that was moderated by Fortune magazine’s Adam Lashinsky.

“The Tom Perkins system is: You don't get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes,” Perkins told Lashinsky, reports CNN Money. “But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?”

While the audience laughed, Perkins didn’t appear to be joking. “I intended to be outrageous, and it was,” Perkins told CNN backstage, adding that his comments would “make you more angry than my letter to the Wall Street Journal.”

According to MSNBC, Perkins pointed to the Jeffersonian concept that only landowners get a vote. It’s an idea radio host Bryan Fischer, a conservative, recently brought up as well.

The Wall Street Journal letter Perkins referred to caused a stir, since he had suggested that the supposed rise of anger against the richest people in the country was like the Holocaust. He eventually apologized and said today that he did go too far.